by James Wyllie
ROOM FOR ONE MORE. THE BRANDENBURG GATE, 9 NOVEMBER. THE TEXT ON THE SIGN, ‘NOTICE! YOU ARE NOW LEAVING WEST BERLIN’, HAS BEEN MODIFIED WITH THE WORDS ‘WIE DENN?’ (‘HOW, THEN?’).
INTO THE WEST
Once you have passed through the Bornholmerstrasse checkpoint, cross the BÖSEBRÜCKE BRIDGE and you have arrived in West Berlin. You can stop here and watch the extraordinary lava flow of East Germans coming through all night. Some West Berliners will be gathering to watch and to greet their fellow countrymen, but we suggest at some point in the evening you take a stroll to see the action at other points along the Wall.
Approximately fifteen minutes’ walk southwest is the CHECKPOINT ON INVALIDENSTRASSE. You will find that the Stasi and the East German border guards here are taking a much stiffer line with East Germans trying to cross over, as indicated by the large, noisy and agitated crowd that are stuck on the other side of the border. West Berliners will also be gathering here. Around 1.00am, look out for the arrival of WALTER MOMPER, the Social Democratic mayor of West Berlin. He is easily recognisable – a bald man with a very bright-red scarf and a megaphone – and will be addressing both the crowd and the West and East German border guards, calling for calm and for the East Berliners to be let through. By 1.30am it is pretty clear to all that no one will be passing across here this evening, so take the first left off Invalidenstrasse and head into the TIERGARTEN, West Berlin’s large park. You can’t miss UNTER DEN LINDEN, the large road that runs east–west through the park. Follow the crowds east and after 400 yards the Wall should come back into view. Behind it you will see the great neoclassical columns of the BRANDENBURG GATE.
Although there is no checkpoint at the Brandenburg Gate, which is inaccessible from both East and West Berlin, lying in no-man’s land between the two parts of the Berlin Wall, Berliners from both sides of the divide have been drawn to the gate all evening. The scene will be all the more dramatic as American television companies have established themselves here and installed floodlights to illuminate both the wall and their own broadcasts. On the Western side the Wall is unusually low and has, for some of its length, a flat top. If you arrive early you will find a crowd just milling around, but from 9.00pm onwards individuals will begin climbing up to the Wall. We advise that you not to join them at this point as the East German border guards will be using water hoses for the next couple of hours in an effort to knock people off. Look out, though, for one young man who will be braving the water cannon, shielding himself using an umbrella given to him by one of the crowd. Later in the evening the hoses will be turned off and the Western side of the Wall will make an excellent vantage point from which to view a steady stream of East Berliners walking across the eerily lit plaza that the Brandenburg Gate stands in.
Your final stop on the evening’s itinerary is CHECKPOINT CHARLIE, the most famous of the border crossings, located in the US zone of West Berlin, south and east of the Brandenburg Gate. Just follow the line of the Wall until you reach Friedrichstrasse. Here you will see the small metal hut that serves as the checkpoint office on the Western side and the famous CAFÉ ADLER, a regular haunt of spies and military officials during the Cold War. Should you choose to come early in the evening, café owner Albrecht Rau can be seen making his way to the East with a tray laden with glasses, sparkling wine and hot coffee for the border guards. They will refuse the drinks, but Albrecht will be celebrating anyway. The border guards will then attempt to seal the border by putting a variety of additional barriers in place, but by a quarter past midnight the crowds will start tumbling over them.
FRIDAY 10 NOVEMBER: CENTRAL BERLIN
Today is a day to just wander around central Berlin. Over half a million people will be making the journey through the Wall today. The vast majority will do so on foot, but some 26,000 vehicles will cross the border, nearly all of them East Germany’s characteristic TRABANTS and WARTBURGS. You will soon become accustomed to the unique sound of the Trabant’s sclerotic two-stroke engine and the peculiar fumes and billowing toxic smoke generated by the ersatz mixture of petrol and oil that they run on. Some cars will be flying the East German flag but with the hammer and sickle emblem at the centre cut out, leaving it remarkably similar to the West German flag.
You will also note the sharp differences in attire between East and West Berliners. VISITORS FROM THE EAST have unsurprisingly drab wardrobes and thin coats; economic inequalities that will persist for the next three decades. This will all be nicely summed up in POTSDAMER PLATZ mid-morning when the West German president, RICHARD VON WEIZSÄCKER, will arrive, shake a few hands, and then head off in his gleaming black Mercedes followed by a dirty-khaki Wartburg and a filthy-green Trabant. Meantime, take in the sweet sounds of a hundred HAMMERS AND CHISELS at work taking souvenirs of the Wall – in the West, the most covetable areas are those covered in graffiti. This is also a moment to appreciate the speed at which the commercial impulse can work: much of the new chippings and rubble will soon be turned into souvenirs, whileT-shirts with the legend Ich war dabei: November 9 (I was there: November 9) will already be on sale near the Wall.
But today is about unity. Everyone is a Berliner and everyone is a German, including the enormous number of people flooding into the city from all over Western Europe. One example not to miss is the Amsterdamer in Postdamerplatz who will be parking up with a van full of 10,000 roses straight from the Dutch city’s famous flower market. He will proceed to give them to the new arrivals. Flowers are not the only gifts on offer. Public transport is effectively free today and tomorrow, with bus drivers refusing fares and the underground system full to bursting. A special edition of the local newspaper, Berliner Morgenpost, will be given away free on the streets, and throughout the day many individual Berliners, and some cafés and restaurants, will be offering free drinks, snacks, teas and coffees. Near the checkpoints there are trucks doling out bags of free fruit, chewing gum and Western cigarettes – another treat that will be spontaneously passed around. For those that are partial, the Kreuzberg district around Checkpoint Charlie also offers plenty of welcoming joints. Follow your nose and look interested.
On their first visit to the West, East Germans are entitled to a welcoming gift from the West German government of 100 Deutschmarks, available on presentation of ID at any bank or post office. The BERLINER BANK on West Berlin’s fanciest shopping street KURFÜRSTENDAMM is worth looking in on to see this in action – expect a queue five deep and a quarter of a mile long. While the street’s enormous and opulent department stores will be drawing astonished looks from East Berliners, they won’t be spending much of their money there. Many, however, can be seen holding bags of fruit – bananas, oranges and kiwis – hitherto unavailable to them.
There are two special events today worth making a detour for. For the political junkies, West Germany’s leading politicians will be speaking at RATHAUS SCHÖNEBERG at about 2.30pm. Originally merely the town hall of the Schöneberg district, the building has been the seat of the Berlin Senate and the mayor’s office since 1950 – Berlin’s traditional seat of government, the Rotes Rathaus lies in ruins still in Mitte on the other side of the wall. The cast includes West German Chancellor HELMUT KOHL, only recently arrived in the city after breaking his official visit to Poland, and his foreign minister HANS-DIETRICH GENSCHER; WILLY BRANDT, a native of the city and Chancellor of West Germany in the 1960s and early 1970s; and WALTER MOMPER, the current Mayor of West Berlin. It will be an old-fashioned media scrum as the photographers, cameramen and boom operators jostle at the front. Kohl’s key moments come when he says, ‘Long Live a free German fatherland! Long live a free Europe,’ and ‘I want to call to all in the GDR we’re on your side, we remain one nation. We belong together.’ Willy Brandt, visibly moved, will offer a moment’s caution: ‘This is a beautiful day after a long voyage, but we are only at a waystation. We are not at the end of our way.’
To get to the Rathaus Schöneberg, take a train on Line 2 heading west from the centre and change at Nollendorfpla
tz for line 4; you’ll be looking for a train heading south to Innsbruckerplatz.
Music lovers should head for the section of wall just to the West of CHECKPOINT CHARLIE. There you will find the great Russian cellist MSTISLAV ROSTROPOVICH playing. Rostropovich defected from the Soviet Union in 1971 and has just flown in from Paris to offer this impromptu concert in honour of those who died trying to cross the Wall. He will be opening with a sensational rendition of Bach’s Second Suite for cello, the Sarabande.
SATURDAY NOVEMBER 11: A GAME OF FOOTBALL
Saturday continues very much in the vein of Friday, with ever larger numbers of East Germans flooding across the now routinely open border crossings, still being met by ecstatic West Berliners. New crossings will be opening today at the GLIENICKE BRIDGE and on EBERSWALDERSTRASSE, where an East German army bulldozer will actually smash down a segment of the Wall to relieve pressure on the other checkpoints.
Mid-morning will see a more DIY effort to do the same in Potsdamerplatz, where a group of ALT-WEST BERLINERS will be showing up in an old jeep. Parking up close to the Wall they will attempt to fix a huge chain to the concrete slabs and then to the jeep. Around them the crowd will take up the cry ‘The Wall must go!’ as well the now ubiquitous ‘One land, one people.’ The bohemian feel of the moment is enhanced by a group of pan-pipe players nearby. These efforts will be thwarted, however, by East German border guards turning a water cannon on the jeep crew. They will be ably supported by the West German police, who will park a phalanx of vans up against the Wall to prevent a reoccurrence of the event. The crowd will respond to the East German guards, now on the Wall itself, with cries of ‘Come down! Do you want to starve over there?’
ROSTROPOVICH PLAYS BACH IN FRONT OF THE WALL: NOTE THE GRAFFITI ‘CHARLIE’S RETIRED’. THEY DON’T WAIT AROUND WITH THE SPRAYPAINT.
Alternatively, head for the FOOTBALL MATCH between HERTHA BERLIN and WATTENSCHEID kicking off at 3.00pm at the Olimpiastadion, the centrepiece of the 1936 Berlin Olympics, in the west of the city. Prior to the opening of the Wall, it was billed merely as a top-of-the-table clash in the German Bundesliga 2, but since the morning of 10 November it has become a remarkable opportunity for all of Berlin to celebrate the historic moment.
Until 1971 Hertha Berlin were located in the Wedding district of the city, at their old stadium, the Gesundbrunnen. In 1961 the Wall was erected just a few hundred yards east of the stadium, closing it off to the large body of support in East Berlin. For many years, East Berliners would gather near the Wall to hear the sounds of the crowd as Hertha played on the other side. Today they have the chance to go and see them in their new home, the OLIMPIASTADION, with 10,000 free tickets available to anyone who can produce an East German ID card. Don’t worry if you can’t, though; there will be plenty of opportunity to just show up and buy a ticket.
Prior to the kick-off, the stadium announcer will call out the names of all the districts of Berlin – both East and West – and the crowd will respond heartily. Wattenscheid will take the lead after sixteen minutes of the first half, but in the sixty-fourth minute nineteen-year-old Sven Kretschmer will grab a scrappy equaliser for Hertha. The team will go on to win promotion to the Bundesliga’s first division at the end of the season.
To get to the game, you’ll need to head south of the Brandenburg Gate to one of the stations on the U1 metro line – either Möckernbrücke or Gleisdreieck – and head west on the trains bound for Ruhleben. Olimpiastadion is the penultimate stop.
PART THREE
CULTURAL & SPORTING SPECTACULARS
The 235th Olympiad
AUGUST AD 161 OLYMPIA, GREECE
IN THE FIFTH CENTURY BC THE POET Pindar called the Olympics the ‘pinnacle of contests’ – and the ancient games held at Olympia, almost a millennium old when you arrive, still fit the bill. Our trip offers the chance to spend a week in this beautiful complex of temples, shrines, stadiums and bathhouses on the rolling plains and meadows of Elis in the northwest Peloponnese. With its Olympic site recently and extensively refurbished by the Roman Empire, the 235TH OLYMPIAD offers all the ritual and the spectacle of the Classical Hellenic era, and a level of comfort and quality of accommodation that is unmatched in the anceint world. With unrivalled access to the whole sanctuary, you will enjoy a week of processions and sacrifices, pentathlon and pankration, chariot racing and wrestling; and the unique opportunity to see a real wonder of the ancient world. Note that events at the games can only be witnessed by MEN, so all travellers will be dressed and made up accordingly.
BRIEFING: THE ANCIENT OLYMPIC GAMES
The SANCTUARY OF OLYMPIA, set in the foothills of Mount Kronos in the eastern Peloponnese has been a place of spiritual pilgrimage and worship for over a thousand years before your arrival in AD 161. As early as the eighth century, permanent shrines were built here to worship the ancient Hellenic mother gods. At some point, conventionally dated as 776 BC, RITUAL GAMES began to be played at Olympia, though they were just local affairs. In the sixth century bc these games began to attract a wider audience and take on a Panhellenic quality, while Olympia itself acquired the magnificent TEMPLE OF ZEUS, whose giant sculpture of the god was considered one of the seven wonders of the Ancient World. Reflecting the fanatical body culture of the gymnasiums and the barracks of Greece’s growing city -states, the Games took on ever greater significance and popularity. In the early fifth century BC the programme of events at the Games was fixed as a five-day festival of athletics, and it remained substantially unchanged until the Romans conquered Greece in the second century and added an extra day to the party.
As with so much else about Greece, the ROMANS left things pretty much intact but improved the infrastructure. At these Olympics, visitors have truly never had it so good. Back in the day, visitors spending a week at Olympia would find there were no public toilets and no supplies of running fresh water; they would stay in tent villages that emerged in the fields around the sanctuary, beset by the intense heat and dust of a Greek August.
SPOT THE DIFFFERENCE! AN ARTIST’S IMPRESSION OF THE WALLED ALTIS AT ANCIENT OLYMPIA, SHOWING THE TEMPLE OF ZEUS IN THE FOREGROUND. YOU WILL STRUGGLE TO FIND THE LARGE AMPHITHEATRE ON THE LEFT, WHICH IS ENTIRELY FANCIFUL.
Epictetus the Stoic, true to form, thought even that worth enduring: ‘Are you not scorched with heat? Are you not cramped for room? Is not washing difficult? Are you not wet through when it is wet? Do you not get your fill of noise and clamour and other annoyances? Yet I fancy that when you set against all these hardships the magnificence of the spectacle you bear them and put up with them.’ Aelian, by contrast, decreed it a fate worse than forced labour: ‘A man from Chios got angry with his house-slave and said, “I shan’t put you on the treadmill, but I will take you to Olympia.” For the master thought it a much harsher punishment that he should watch at Olympia, and be baked under the sun, than that he should be sent to grind corn on the treadmill.’ Either way, the informal Olympic village remained riotous enough to need its own dedicated police force known as the whipbearers.
THE TRIP
We plan to offer future trips, for keen Hellenists, to the more ascetic pre-Roman Olympics. However, visitors on this trip will witness the games – the 235TH OLYMPIAD – in Roman style, and in comparative luxury. The Romans have already added luxurious accommodation and proper bathhouses and toilets, and this year there will be running drinking water for the first time. The site as a whole is looking fresh, too. Over the last ten years HERODES ATTICUS, the richest man in Athens, has been building the NYMPHAEUM – a great memorial water feature dedicated to his late wife – and a plumbing system to supply it. At this Olympiad it will be in working order for the first time, making your stay infinitely more pleasant and the environment infinitely more healthy. You will ARRIVE BY BOAT on the afternoon before the game, landing on the north bank of the KLADEOS RIVER, where you will be taken to your room in the nearby ROMAN HOTEL COMPLEX. You will be DEPARTING from here on the evening of the sixth and final day of the festiva
l.
THE FESTIVAL SITE
At the centre of Olympia is the sacred walled compound, THE ALTIS, that contains the site’s temples and shrines. The Romans have built up and repaired the ALTIS WALL, added porticos and monumental arches and laid out paths and gardens. Normally, this would be a very tranquil place, but over the next week it is going to make the Roman Forum look quiet. Thousands of visitors from all across the Roman Empire will mingle with athletes, trainers, priests, dignitaries, poets, judges and umpires. There will also be plenty of servants, cooks and factotums from amongst the entourages of the elites, as well as itinerant soothsayers, conmen and hawkers spilling over from the TENT CITIES in the surrounding meadows.
You will enter the Altis through the PROPYLON, a monumental arch set into the wall, at the northwest corner of the compound. To your immediate right will be the PRYTANEION, the nerve centre of Olympia and its games; nearby is a small circular monument, the PHILIPPEION. Built in the sixth century BC, the Prytaneion houses the high priests of Olympia and an eternal sacred fire still burns here. During the Games, officials will use the building and entertain Olympic champions in its dining chambers. The Philippeion is a small circular memorial, its carved marble roof held up by a colonnade of Ionic columns. It was commissioned by Philip of Macedon to commemorate his victory at the Battle of Chaeronea in 338 BC and serves as a reminder of his victory in the horse racing at Olympia in 356 BC. Inside you will find a family scene in ivory and gold: Philip, his father; his son Alexander the Great; and his fourth wife and Alexander’s mother, Olympias.
